By: Jaclyn Chen <[email protected]>

For anyone who’s seen Hollywood’s “Freedom Writers,” “Dangerous Minds” or “Take the Lead,” the logical conclusion is that it takes a spectacular, unusual method to spark the minds of apathetic high school students. For Perry Meridian High School teacher Connie Heermann, the idea took on new meaning when she used The Freedom Writers Diary in her own classroom.

Heermann, according to an Indianapolis Star article, attended a summer training session by Erin Gruwell, the teacher who published and inspired the Freedom Writers book and movie. Heermann brought the book back to school and assigned it to her classes after obtaining permission from the principal and the parents. According to the article, the school district now says that it never OK’ed the book and fired Heermann for insubordination.

Regardless of the administrative procedures Heermann may or may not have violated, the school district exercised its authority too firmly. As a high school student, I am offended that adults would assume that, being young, I’m not mature enough to understand controversial material. And for the Perry Meridian school board to assert the same of its students is for it to assume that the education it offers doesn’t teach students about the complexity of important social issues. The statement the school board makes by firing Heermann is one of distrust and disbelief in its own system.

The controversy pertains to the racial and sexual slurs in the book, a collection of frank diary entries written by Gruwell’s inner-city students. According to the Freedom Writers Foundation’s Web site, Gruwell taught Holocaust literature in order to parallel the violence the students saw in their lives to a historic event they could relate to. The students kept detailed diaries about their lives, and the key to their learning, according to the Foundation, was their writing.

I am no expert on the best teaching methods, but as a student, I can say what doesn’t work. The easiest way to bore me in a classroom is to teach watered-down subjects. Literature with happy endings doesn’t enliven discussion, and history without debatable conflicts turns into Disney fairy tales. These techniques would send me straight into my post-lunch daze, and I’m a more eager learner than most. I can imagine the same applies for students already apathetic, only to a more excruciating degree; bored students with structured, approved curriculum hardly incites learning.

And if, for the Perry Meridian school board, the debate boils down to subject matter, it should note that some of the greatest books ever written have been about controversial topics. To Kill a Mockingbird comments on the intense prejudice harbored against African Americans grounded in a rape trial, and Brave New World presents a startling image of a diluted yet sexed-up world. These novels contain disturbing concepts, yet most educators will probably agree that there is merit to be found in their words.

This generation is one guided by YouTube and Facebook, and getting our attention through reading does require some effort by teachers. We can learn well through traditional lecture and note-taking, but an occasional dose of new methods is hardly detrimental. Just because we’re students doesn’t mean we have a fragile exterior that controversial discussions can crush. Instead, these discussions, like the ones Gruwell and Heermann used in their classrooms, foster a worldly type of learning that’s not confined to a textbook. These are the moments students will remember.

Controversial or not, Heermann employed a technique that would hopefully strike a chord in her otherwise uninterested students, but despite its promise, the method will never see fruition at Perry Meridian. While the administration has a right to direct what its teachers can and cannot teach, it seems unfair that Heermann must be punished severely for trying something new – her dismissal is a disservice to her students.

As a student, I hope Heermann’s situation does not force teachers to abandon attempts of excited and engaged learning for safe, yet sometimes monotonous curriculum. Schools should protect their students from obscenity to a certain extent, but they have a responsibility to teach about both the good and the bad, about both philanthropy and prejudice. High schools shouldn’t baby their students by not exposing them to reality and history. This isn’t protection, but rather a delayed exposure to the real world. Jaclyn Chen is the editor in chief of the HiLite. Contact her at [email protected].